Title X

To the surprise of literally no one, President Trump’s 2018 budget proposed stripping all federal funds, including Medicaid dollars, from Planned Parenthood. Proponents of this argue that if Planned Parenthood clinics end up shuttered, women can simply access care elsewhere. But growing research shows that’s the opposite of what actually happens.
We got even more evidence of this with a report on the capacity of federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) to fill the gaps left when a Planned Parenthood clinic is forced to close its doors. In a policy paper from the Guttmacher Institute…

In the 18 days between House Republicans’ introduction of the American Health Care Act and its withdrawal, women’s health was in the spotlight. With House Speaker Paul Ryan now stating that he’s going to try again on legislation to “replace” the Affordable Care Act, it’s worth looking at some of the ways the ACA has benefited women – and how actions from Congress and the Trump administration could affect women’s insurance coverage and access to care.
Women gained coverage under the ACA
The ACA’s biggest achievement was reducing the percentage of the population without health insurance. It did…

New data from CDC's National Center for Health Statistics show that the US teen birth rate dropped substantially between 2007 and 2015, but it has declined most slowly in rural areas. "From 2007 through 2015, teen birth rates declined 50% in large urban counties, 44% in medium and small urban counties, and 37% in rural counties," Brady E. Hamilton, Lauren M. Rossen, and Amy M. Branum report. They note that declines occurred in all states and in all major racial groups, but geographic disparities have persisted.
In a 2014 Guttmacher Policy Review article, Heather D. Boonstra investigated…

Since Congress left for recess seven weeks ago without approving funding to address the Zika virus, the Obama administration has declared a public health emergency in Puerto Rico and the Florida Health Department has identified two areas in Miami-Dade County with local transmission of Zika. Now that Congress is returning to the capital, I hope this evidence of Zika’s spread will convince them to provide sufficient funding for all of the following:
Research into vaccines and other healthcare measures to reduce Zika’s impact;
Mosquito control and outreach campaigns to slow Zika’s spread (which…

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, American women are saving hundreds of dollars on birth control, according to the first study to document the impact of health reform on prescription contraception spending.
To conduct the study, which was published this month in Health Affairs, researchers analyzed claims data from a large national insurer between January 2008 and June 2013, eventually examining data linked to more than 790,800 women. They found that the average out-of-pocket expense decreased for nearly all prescription contraceptive methods on the market. In particular, the average out-of-…

The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee's FY 2016 Labor, Health and Human Services funding bill contains a single sentence that could dramatically set back public health: "None of the funds appropriated in this Act 4 may be used to carry out title X of the PHS Act."
Title X is a federal grant program that funds a network of 4,400 centers that provide high-quality, cost-effective family-planning services for approximately five million clients each year. These centers also offer breast and cervical cancer screening and pregnancy testing, and they provide both men and women with HIV…

Last week, Vox’s German Lopez highlighted a recent study that demonstrates how improving access to the most effective contraceptives can slash the rates of unintended pregnancies and abortions among teens. After the Colorado Family Planning Initiative (CFPI) started providing free IUDs and implants to low-income women at family planning clinics, the teen birth rate and abortion rate dropped sharply. Lopez notes that the teen birth rate has been declining nationwide, but Colorado’s has dropped more quickly: “Between 2008 and 2012, the state went from the 29th lowest teen birth rate in the…

Higher insurance rates don’t mean people stop seeking care at publically funded health centers, found a recent study of family planning clinics in Massachusetts. The findings speak to serious concerns within public health circles that policy-makers may point to higher insurance rates as a justification to cut critical public health funding.
Published in the Jan. 24 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the study examines trends among uninsured patients seeking care at Massachusetts health centers that receive Title X Family Planning Program funds. (The federal Title X program…

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